001foreign [Music] I'd like to call the March 1st 2023 regular meeting of the Brookfield Board of Education to order please join me for the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay we have all our board members here this evening um so board members we do have some outside presenters here this evening and I'd like to make a motion to uh um well I'd like to move items V which is the board recognition we have an outside presenter and item a under new business to the next item on the agenda does anybody have any objection of me doing that all right I was hearing no objection those items
002are moved to next on the agenda so first up is board recognition Dr Burrell I'll turn it to you all right thanks I want to First thanks though March Keith thank you Mr Belden the um March is Board of Education appreciation month and like always it's important to acknowledge our volunteer board members for their leadership support and commitment to the students in the hours they put in on a volunteer basis it is it's been a challenging couple of years and this particular board has been in place during that time and we commend we on behalf of the administration and the faculty and the staff we commend you and thank you for your leadership and dedication to the staff and to the students it's greatly appreciated with that we have a Cabe representative tonight Mr Dan
003krusson he's actually a current member and Veteran member please come on up down to the podium of the Newtown Board of Education and he is going to be presenting the board with a cave Communications excellent award on the going green project so Dan make sure the mic's on for you welcome thank you thank you good evening superintendent perel and members of the Brookfield Board of Education thank you very much for having me my name is Dan quierson as and as super temporal said I am here representing K by in the area five director which covers Brookfield and Bethel and Newtown and a lot of the surrounding towns I am here to present to you the Bonnie B Carney Award of Excellence for educational Communications uh entries for that award must meet all of the following
004criteria first is the general criteria which includes Clarity of message image and consistency and second is the specific guidelines of readability editing Graphics type format presentation design and value of expenditure so I am very happy to present this to the Brookfield public schools for the educational communication going green Cabe has been honoring school districts with the Award of Excellence for educational communication since 1975. in 2016 the award was renamed in honor of long time Cabe staff member Bonnie B Carney in recognition of her 47 years of dedication to education focused on Communications with this award cape's goal to identify and honor the hard-working people in school districts for their continuing effort to commute cape's goal is to identify sorry and honor the hard-working people in school districts for their continuing effort to communicate effectively so
005congratulations for receiving this award and I'm told you also have some honorable mentions as well sure so maybe you could bring this over to Mr Belden and Sean that would be wonderful thank you Dan congratulations board thank you very much thanks Dan and Mr cruison did mention um some honorable mentions from the board of education for excellent excellence in communication through Cabe and that is the district calendar pass that certificate around as well as the covet opening plan and another honorable mention for the Brookfield broadcast newsletter so we have to thank the board for their continued support and making sure we're getting the word out on the different initiatives and ongoings of the school system a special thanks must go out especially because it was a it was more than a honorable mention it was
006an Award of Excellence the going green project Mrs gramling is the district coordinator for that with hrra so thank you Mrs gramling for everything you do with that project congratulations and the going green projects the posters for this year's um uh poster awards for HRA are already on sitting on top of Lisa's desk right now so that's all all full circle and coming around so um some wonderful Awards there so I will say I saw last year's poster winner on the back of a bus yes and I was uh and it was great absolutely so uh Dan thank you very much for coming this evening we appreciate you taking the time out of your evening and uh thank you congratulations again thank you thank you Dan all right so the next item that we had
007moved up on the agenda is item a from new business which is the Sandy Hook promise see something say something app for anonymous reporting the action here is to receive a presentation so John I'll let you sure do introductions thanks Mr Belden so I'd like to invite Sandy Hook promise Representatives um Mindy Loeb lob excuse me and Myra Lucci another new town resident up here a neighbor of ours and they've done some work with us and they're going to present on the Sandy Hook promise see something say something app that we are adopting and we've talked about this several times at board meetings we're really excited to get things started this month it is an anonymous reporting system and it's a yet another layer of Safety and Security that we're working on in our schools
008so I'll turn it over to the ladies thank you okay thank you so much for having us we are excited to be here because being here means that we are onboarding or say something Anonymous Reporting System Program into your schools um my name is Myra Lucci and I am a senior director with Sandy Hook promise I oversee the onboarding and implementation of our program Nationwide and um with me is Mindy love who will be presenting to you we're going to be giving you a presentation showing you how the implementation what the program is about and the implementation process the presentation and the purpose of it is hopefully to answer your questions before you even have them but it might also Inspire some questions that you didn't even know you had so we'll be very happy
009to answer any questions you have after the presentation again really happy to be here and Mindy blob will be presented to you hello everyone thank you to superintendent and the board for having us here we are so excited my name is Mindy lobb and I work on Myra's team um and I am the um east region account manager um so I will be leading the project and have been working with Eric Conklin the Project Lead so I'm going to start the program overview and I think I'm going to just I'm gonna try the clicker but we'll see how that goes so this is a overview of the say something Anonymous reporting system brought to you by Sandy Hook promise I know a lot of you are familiar we are neighbors um in proximity so but
010I will tell you just a little bit about how Sandy Hook promise got started um we started in tragedy right 10 years ago when there was a shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School that took the lives of 20 students and six adults and two of the parents that lost children that day decided to turn their tragedy into transformation they wanted to make it so nobody would ever have to experience that kind of pain and so Sandy Hook promise was started and its mission is to educate and Empower Youth and adults to prevent violence in schools homes and communities here's a little bit of our reach so you'll see our say something Anonymous Reporting System we have just under 3 million participated students and adults in our program with just under 80 um three thousand tips
011submitted and of those tips we've had just under three thousand mental health interventions these are our sister programs start with hello and say something and our safe promise clubs so these are clubs that are associated with our program and we are just under 4 000 clubs Nationwide the say something Anonymous reporting system Works in a three-step process step one we want to teach youth how to recognize warning signs and threats especially in social media because that's where frankly our students live these days but anywhere they might be whether that's on the school bus in a grocery store or in the lunchroom and we want to them to recognize warning signs from individuals that might be a risk to themselves or others and we want them to act immediately and take it seriously so this is
012part two of our teaching and our education we want to teach students to be upstanders not bystanders we want them to realize that they might be all the only one in the room that recognize these warning signs or saw these warning signs and we want them to commit to doing something about it we realize we're fighting an uphill battle um with the saying snitches get stitches so we are teaching students hopefully the difference between saying something to get somebody help versus telling on somebody to get somebody in trouble and last but not least we want them to say something to a trusted adult you're going to see in our training that we emphasize relationships between students and trusted adults we want every student to have a trusted adult in their life and so we talk
013a lot about who these adults might be it could be a teacher it could be a friend's parent it can be a pastor it can be um you know your grandparent we want you to go to a trusted adult first and foremost but if these students don't have a trusted adult and many of them don't we teach them to use the ARs which I'm going to talk to you about our crisis center but go to one of our trusted crisis center counselors to get help or when appropriate to call 9-1-1 this is our tip management process it is a three-step process step one the tipster which can be youth or an adult submits a tip using the app a hotline or a website step two the tip is received by our nationally accredited crisis center
014they work 24 7 365 receiving tips they vet triage categorize these tips and deliver it to your school teams these teams are district level teams and school level teams and 9-1-1 dispatch teams that then assess this concern collaborate with our crisis center and then finally provide intervention as needed and as per your current protocol here's the three ways to submit a tip as I mentioned the mobile app which is downloadable via the Google Play store or the Apple Store it is free the website is www.saysomething.net and we have a hotline a tipster must always associate themselves with a school so once you are live with our program then your students and your adults submitting a tip will be able to pick your school from a drop down menu these are our top tip types they're
015in no particular order but they do switch around depending on what's going on in the world we do see bullying and cyber bullying near the top tip types Nationwide followed by vaping and substance abuse usually but during covet and post covid we have noticed an increase in anxiety depression suicidal threat and ideation and cutting and that has been a trend that unfortunately has stayed higher than usual um when we do have events you know in the world sadly like Vivaldi or Buffalo then we're going to see these tips involving planned attacks going up and that is because people are hyper Vigilant they're looking out for these signs these warning signs and threats so you will see a jump sometimes during those times but all in all we found that only three to six percent of
016students trained will submit tips so it is a manageable number here's our crisis center I wanted to introduce you to them because they are wonderful as I said we just became a nationally accredited crisis center and this took a lot of hours and a lot of effort so we're very proud of them they are based out of Miami they are multilingual they have a wealth of expertise and experience they are always updating their certifications um and they're just very caring individuals that love what they do and I think this is one of the things that sets our program apart is that you have this dedicated crisis center that are willing to talk with these students and adults whoever is making these alerts they're spending the time to find out what's going on they're going to
017be be talking with these these students that submit tips just to assess and and get you know the who what where when why how determined when a tip comes in this is a narrative this is a screenshot of a narrative from our system the crisis center is going to acknowledge that tip when it comes in within 30 seconds to one minute of receiving it they are going to review all the details in the narrative from the tipster and this is for the purpose like I said of getting information determining credibility and then they're going to start engaging in two-way Anonymous dialogue with the tipster and this is really because they want to find out two main things is the person that is you know of concern okay and where are they foreign they're going to
018also categorize the tip as Life Safety or non-life safety in this process through this dialogue if it's going to be labeled as Life Safety it has to fit the following criteria there has to be a threat of substantial bodily harm or death it has to be imminent in progress or just happened there has to be credible information including evidence provided the suspect has to have the means or the intent to carry out the threat and it has to be actionable meaning we have enough information for an intervention to happen right now so when this criteria is present it will be labeled as a life safety tip and if some of them if if it's three out of you know five then the crisis center will most likely depending on the circumstances err on the side
019of caution whenever necessary they're going to deliver the tip at this point to your teams your district and school teams and this is for the purpose of getting additional information we know that the teachers and the administrators are the boots on the ground and they have more information so we're asking at that point these teams to log into the system review that narrative and the information that the crisis center has already discovered and then act upon the tip and a lot of times that is we're asking for additional information like I said about that student that you know we might not know and also we might want to know some demographics so if it is determined a life safety tip we're of course wanting to get 9-1-1 their law enforcement there quicker so you can
020provide demographic information and then there will be a clear handoff statement and this is where your teams your district and your school teams will become that front seat driver and it will be very clear and it will be yours then to take and assess and intervene as needed so let's talk about these teams and your teams so this is kind of what we're doing in the implementation process I've started working with Eric to build your District team and your school teams your District team is made up of three to five district level administrators including Eric as a team lead and this team receives life safety tips only your school teams are also made up of three to five School level administrators including a team lead and this school team is going to be built at
021all schools with grades 6 to 12. that is what our program is for is grades 6 to 12 right now and they're going to receive both life safety and non-life safety tips and then we're going to work with like I said your First Responders your your 911 dispatch and your law enforcement right and we'd love them to come on board with us and collaborate with us so we look to you to help us make those relationships and build that team and that way we want to train your 911 dispatchers also on our platform how to log in and three-way communicate with our crisis center your teams and and they're all sharing information there so some of the things we bring to the table is our account management team I'm part of that account management team
022again working with your lead to build those adult teams right to train those teams on our platform our P3 platform to make sure your students get training and we carry out that plan together we make sure you have awareness materials that go up in your hallways in the high traffic areas of your school so students know about the program and they remember how to submit a tip um we give you access to our digital Learning Center which is wonderful it's full of activity guides and lesson plans and other trainings just like the one we're talking about tonight things that you can do throughout the year to amplify the message and it's all aligned to Castle social emotional learning competencies all right our training for students we train our students in two ways right now via
023Plug and Play video or in our digital learning library that I just mentioned or a live virtual trainer so with the proximity we could also come to your school to train we haven't done a lot of that since covet but right now those are two modes of training um training is usually done classroom style it takes about an hour and um again you know usually done through maybe an extended home room or you know a different block period that you can rotate through and then we also provide information for your parents we want parents to know that this program is coming and what it's all about [Music] sources that you can share with them including a template a brochure and a program overview we have a sustainability team so once you come on with us
024we want this to be a program that stays with you for years to come so this sustainability team is there for that purpose they're going to help provide ongoing professional development as your adult teams turnover we know there's turnover in education they're going to get training when they come in as a new team member we're going to make sure your students get refresh trained every year we found that this is critical in the success of this program the students need to hear the message more than just one time so they hear it annually our sustainability team puts out a newsletter it's got a lot of information they help you update those awareness materials as needed and then they're just there for ongoing consultation this is a look at those awareness materials these are the posters
025and window clings they're going to get they're going to go in the high traffic areas of your schools teaching students the three ways to submit a tip and the three steps to our program and our safe promise clubs I mentioned those at the beginning save stands for students against violence everywhere every participating School in our program has a safe promise Club and we found that this is really where the magic happens this is where you get that student voice and the student buy-in and this is really where you start seeing a culture shift in your District these are student-led clubs and so the student voice becomes prominent now instead of adults telling them that this is important they're telling each other why it's important and how it's important through these clubs this club can be
026embedded into a club that you have that's currently doing this kind of work um maybe a kindness Club maybe an anti-bullying club would be a good fit but if you don't have anything like that it can easily be started from scratch as well with by finding an adult advisor and three to five students that are willing to participate and of course we provide free resources and tools to get that club activated and going this is just a testimonial about the clubs from one of our partners um I think it just speaks again to what I was talking about with the culture shift I'll let you read it but I'll just point out something that I think is great in this quote is that our club has shaped the culture within our school to one of
027looking out for each other and then students taking leadership and ownership to prevent violence before it happens this is really the magic of these clubs this is again like where you're going to get your student voice this is where you're going to get um students really accepting and living that upstander culture and looking out for each other and making there's knowing understanding that they can make their school a better place so thank you very much for your time and attention that is the end of our presentation and I will go ahead and open the floor up for questions Mindy thank you it's important as we get ready for some questions from the board to thank Eric for his leadership as the liaison with this as well as Dean and Mark in their leadership and excitement
028to really get the ball rolling and also our youth commission our youth commission was integral in working with the secondary team and moving this program forward and getting us all moving in that direction and we're looking forward to implementation and training and then implementation over the over the next month but I'm sure there's questions for either Myra or Mindy or maybe even Eric or Dean or Mark so I don't know is there any questions I have one um you mentioned that your the team that you have in Miami is multilingual um Can tips be submitted then in any language well I was maybe not any language but multiple uh well actually in through the app there's a translation and Lindsay I want to say they're like 37 languages please do not ask me what they
029are that's okay but trust me when I say the 37 at the essential itself Spanish English and we do have um another language is spoken presented but but the tips can be submitted and translated um through through the system in various languages all right that's good thank you I had a question um time period from when when a tip comes in and then it goes through the vetting and triage and categorizing and then delivered to our team here how much time goes by in that period that's a great question so it's 30 seconds to a minute what will happen is I'm the crisis counselor is triaging and getting information simultaneously the school team is also being alerted so the school team can get on the system and actually follow the tip as the crisis counselor
030is triaging the tip and in cases of for instance we had a life safety tip where we had a student it was a first person tip most of our tips are third person but in this particular case the student was saying um I'm going to kill myself I wanted someone to tell I'm not going to tell you who I am and while the crisis Council worked the tip for over an hour I happen to be in Miami at the time that this tip was coming in it was one of my largest districts that I had onboarded with over a hundred thousand students and I watch this Council work with this individual for over an hour during that time the school team was asking questions of the counselor to ask the individual we were getting enough
031information so that they were able to determine who this individual was so they're actually working the tip together wow that's impressive any other questions I was curious on the uh how often the trainings are like is it once a year is it a couple times a year yeah so the student training is um every year so following the first initial training which is the core training the students who have already received the training are going to receive a refresher training every year and this is crucial because it's part of our sustainability when summertime comes and those kids go off on summer break you will see that there are practically zero tips the kids make a correlation between the program and school when they come back after summer break they really need to be reacquainted with
032the program so that refresher is crucial now you have sixth graders that are coming in who never have the program they'll be receiving the core program so every year once a year they'll be refresher trained and trained and then as far as the adult that's mandatory for the um for the student training the adult user training we have it available every year we have a series that um new uh adult users could come in and and and to the into this series and and take the class that's not mandatory but the student training is because again in order to sustain the program we need to keep it alive that way we need to make sure we refresh them yes um I just had a question about um basically I was just wondering if you had
033any plans or regulations set in place um for detecting lies or how often that happens because I know with how young these kids are like especially in sixth grade if they don't fully understand um they might give in tips that just aren't necessarily true so I'm just wondering um if you guys detect those a lot or how long it takes or if there might even be consequences if this happens repeatedly that's such a fantastic question we usually get law enforcement to ask us that question but a few things because there are a couple of things you said there right there is the possibility that a tip is unfounded someone may think that they have a concern that it's real and then when you investigate it it actually is not um that's a normal course of
034action of you intervening on something that comes to you we always say you treat the tips as if they came directly to us if a student came directly to you you're going to do the research the same way it coming from the anonymous reporting system or coming directly from a student now when you're talking about malicious intent that's a different story it is amazing to me because these are students that are using the system how few of those we get it's like two or three percent you're gonna find our hoax now you have your hoax which is the silly ones um during one training we had a child submit a tip clowns have red hair you know with something silly like that but then we have those where someone might be looking to get someone
035in trouble it's just really with malicious intent it sounds real if it is identified by the school that someone is interfering with the system like that that is one of the few occasions where we will provide an IP address to try to identify the individual who might be doing that and when the students know this they won't do that it'll be rare that you'll have that kind of um messing around with the system the other time that we will provide an IP address is in the case of someone's life being in danger so I use that example of that young woman who submitted the tip and said I'm going to kill myself I'm not going to tell you who I am well as it turned out our crisis counselors are amazing our crisis Council got
036that individual to self-identify and go to the school counselor while our crisis counselor is on the phone with her if that had not happened you better believe that we are going to provide an IP address and we're going to try to locate where this individual is so if someone's life is at risk or if somebody is using the the system with ill intent that those are the two times when we will break anonymity other than that we promise anonymity to the kids we would not break it any other questions the questions from the board thank you so much for coming this evening we appreciate it the children that call it a severe threat or a real threat but don't go through them don't stay on the phone and don't go through the whole checklists do
037those skin that's a great question again so when we we call those tipping and dipping right so some kids will provide a tip and they won't dialogue with the counselor we will try to provide as many pieces of a puzzle as we can naturally if you don't have enough information to follow through then sadly there's not enough information to follow through you can't do magic so our counselors work really hard to keep the tipster on the line to get as much information as possible that sometimes they'll throw some information in there they'll shy away they'll get nervous and they won't continue on the call and you you know we provide what we can and then the school will try to do whatever they can with that information but when you work the tip one of
038the responses is unfounded or not enough information in that can happen the program speak on when they're training the kids do they speak on anything of sexual violence feature sexual intimidation a lot of things are going on with cell phones today people being put in precarious situations do they talk about that recording incidents so um it's alluded to the different types of tips that you can submit and when you go through our I don't think it was one of the slides why we took I wanna when you go through our app and I recommend that everybody download the app just so that you can see what your kids are going to be using there are a lot of different event types that they can choose from and sexual harassment sexual assault those are all part
039of that list and also when when submitting a tip individuals can also submit a video a picture something that they see that's alarming if that is submitted and there is any sexual content it's redacted and the victim is always protected if it's the sexual assault follow the we follow the the regulations on sexual assault tips so that we really make sure to protect individuals who might be victims of something like that so so let me just uh broadly yeah obviously we have some interested parents here as well a question that comes to mind with the questions being asked is is there a planned session to actually introduce parents and let them have a good healthy q a about this so we always leave that to up to the the school district we are more than
040happy to participate in a PTA meeting or to provide you with the tools so that you can introduce this to your um to your parents in whatever way you see fit Communications will be if I was just going to say that as the end part here wrapping up is Mark and Dean will be working through we'll be working on Communications uh regarding this not only to students but to parents should be very aware of what we're doing we're giving access to the kids but more importantly I these are great questions um I think there's going to be a lot of parents who have questions of how does it really work you're right on the money though we're actually working on a program because we also want to be able to provide a training for parents
041because as much as we want obviously the students who are the ones who witnesses parents witness things too and there are things that parents will not report on because they don't want to be that parent but with a tool where they can provide a tip because they see something alarming they will um so we want to start to also address that parent interest and ability to submit a tip when you see a concern and again you don't want to be that parent and you don't want to self-identify great and the last thing I will say is that Chief belisi and major Frank are on board with Sandy Hook say something app and we'll be working on training and collaboration and we've got everything planned out for for March through April for the spring and then
042obviously this is a six through 12 program so when as we enter into the spring but then move to Cle s we'll have the middle school and the high school on this and then they're working on some Upper Elementary programming for say something as well it's just not developed yet um so we have a fifth and fourth and fifth program fourth and fifth grade program that we just piloted that'll be available and that one is done live virtual only at the moment so the kids can ask the right questions and as far as law enforcement our crisis center has unbelievable relationships with law enforcement and once they get to really work with the district for a long period of time they have a good collaborative relationship that's unique to that particular District the crisis Center's
043Arts crisis center by the way they don't work with any other tips other than Sandy Hook promise any other questions all right thank you so much thank you so much appreciate it and thank you all for changing the uh the order of the operations around there thank you and I I do appreciate the patience of everybody to let this go first so we can let our visitors um able to get on so we're going to go back to the normal flow of the agenda at this point and next up is public comment board before I start on public comment at the last meeting we had a uh one of our speakers pointed out that we had a one of our own policy documents would allow more than three minutes all right so I I did
044spend some time after the last meeting to you know look into that a little bit more one of the first things I did was talk to Debbie and to Dr Burrell and that policy was already under review by the the policy committee because it was so it was pretty out of date so I was glad to hear that that that's under do you have any sense of when that's going to come forward for an update roughly think that's that search into what other districts are doing and we're going to continue our discussion on the 15th and then probably the meeting after they bring it to you okay good um because this one's the what we have is out of date the I did find the five minute reference in there and it's not in the
045policy per se because the policy is pretty broadly stated it's it basically says we will give the public a chance to speak to us this in the regulation where often the regulations are what give a little bit more detail uh second thing I did was I went back and talked to all the prior board chairs and to try and understand how long the um this three the three-minute standard we have today has been uh in in place and it's been a long time I mean I I gave up after uh got past the year 2000 so that means it's at least been 20 years since we've uh that we've been running on a three-minute standard in our in our group so the third thing I did was I spoke to council and said so how
046do I deal with this I've got a policy under review um and we're going to have an update uh that we will all vote on right on on how we deal with public comment but uh what should we do in the meantime and his advice was very simple just waive the existing policy for the purpose of the meetings at each meeting at the beginning unless and we either either I do a without objection type of request from all of you or we actually vote on it um and it's just so that there's not a conflict right between the documents and in the in the meantime he's strongly advise we not change our standard until the policy committee brings it forward we deliberate on it we review it and we vote on it right which is
047the right way to go deal with policy so so um so that's the three bits of input I've done since our last meeting so um so to do any of you have any objection if I go ahead and waive the regulation number 1120 for the purpose of our public comment I'm okay with that um okay well hearing no objections uh uh regulation number one one two o is hereby waft and we'll do that at the beginning of each meeting just you know for Good Housekeeping all right um it was a good catch by Our member of the public who spoke to us about that um the uh so public comment the board does welcome public comment each speaker has up to three minutes to provide input to the board at the start of each meeting
048a maximum of 20 minutes is allotted for comment on any item that's on the agenda and at the end of each meeting time is allowed for any comment that's within the board's jurisdiction which would include any overflow time if we didn't if we ran out of time in the 20 minutes um discussions of school Personnel individual students or individual members of the board is not considered appropriate um and there's reason for that and I I'll repeat what I said before the board has a very specific especially about Personnel a very specific role um about uh personnel management the superintendent is in charge of operating the district and that includes all Personnel matters and Personnel matters should be brought to the superintendent for his consideration or if appropriate to the the principal in that in the
049school or the appropriate administrator underneath Dr Burrell the board has a very specific role under our collective bargaining agreements is that we're an appeal route so it's important that for us to be a effective appeal route if there's ever a Personnel action taken that we need to not be talking about them in our board meetings so that if an employee employee action is taken and it is brought to us that we are not tainted by um you know a long discussions in this environment so our counseling I'm trying to channel Dan in this a little bit our Council has cautioned me very carefully to not be talking about Personnel matters in this so for those of you who are going to speak if we get under Personnel matters please understand if I ask you to
050stop it's because we do have a particular role of the board that we need to keep some Independence and the board is not taking actions over and above what Dr bro has under under his Aegis on Personnel matters so so I appreciate the input but that's an area that we cannot speak about and on students it's just not appropriate I mean to be franked it's we've got a lot of regulations about students and student information that we cannot be talking about them in a public meeting like this so so I'm sorry for going on but that's the background on why that's part of our policy and I'm hoping in any policy update we're clear in explaining the why it's not just the um that here's the rule so with that we do have sign ups
051um there are I went through the list there are five people who've signed up for public comment that have something to do with uh with items on our agenda this evening we have one of those people also said that they would like to speak in the the end of the meeting and we have one one sign up that is not an agenda item and it will be at the end of the evening um so first up is Mrs Rice and name and address before you speak I'd appreciate it and these timers are the three minute timers just keep your eye on them it's rice three old Hemlock Road having children ranging from 28 to 7 I have been part of Brookfield Public Schools past present and I will be the future I have both typical
052and special ed kids so I've seen a lot of parts of this district and I've been here a while and I have to say right now we're in a state of dysregulation affecting both identified and typical students the special administrator Administration will continue to cause a mass Exodus of long-term invaluable staff because unethical decisions have been made to protect one including but not limited to the falsification of the results of an investigation of a student I'm sorry you're talking about personality please be careful yes we are a district in mourning mourning the loss of Staff morale and doing what is best for our students when will enough be enough the new school can be a chance for renewed belief in a district where we now have staff and parents dreading the move your new school
053will be a true success if we can change the negativity that's been brought to the district and retain the staff that we so desperately should value and hold on to I question if that will happen but I want to be hopeful unfortunately due to certain decisions in a time where the news is filled with young children having serious mental health issues we have our Center School without a school psychologist he's on the paper as having resigned he was with us for 23 years and he gave 45 days notice he had contractual obligations but he is no longer with us he left within a week the kids and families he worked with are now not getting the services you're speaking in person sorry every single month yes it is every single month there are people leaving
054this does not have to be the case we can show support and value for our staff but unfortunately we're going to keep losing teachers powers and support with the current climate the lack of respect they have for staff and parents have changed the whole positive attitude of our district our district once had let's stop filling up job postings in other districts with the expertise of our staff members it's not easy getting up here and speaking people always have something to say and I have recently gotten thrown off the Brookfield septo Facebook page for stating my concerns this is a Brookfield public school district-wide PTO more and more people just like to complain behind the backs of administration but more and more people have been contacting me asking me to help voice their concerns I will
055keep getting up here until we get it right thank you thank you very much all right next up is Mrs Matthews thank you Monique Matthews 18 Road I'm here this evening to speak about the special education audit I've spoken up about the need for a deep look into our special education system for well over a year as well as took the time to express my concerns in a meeting with Administration yet I am still shocked at the weak proposal that will be presented this evening the order is not at all a deep dive but what another parent sorry the audit is not at all Deep dive but what another parent has said all along that it will just be the Bare Bones plan to uncover nothing in an attempt to say something was done if
056that's not if it's not done right then it's not even worth doing my first question is that the proposal states that we will be surveying all parents of both typical and identified students I'm fine with a parent survey because I strongly strongly believe every parent should have a voice but a general education parent would likely have no knowledge into the lack of commitment follow through and the administration failures to drive instruction that affects our most vulnerable students by no means am I suggesting that they are not having issues I am simply stating that the issues are much more different recently I had several parents of non-tip non-identified students asked me what is an IEP what is a PPT luckily for them they have never had to sit through one and experience the intense anxiety a
057parent feels fighting for what their child so desperately deserves to be successful because their legal binding contract plan is not being filed or the lack of proper identification as to why the child is struggling The Proposal does not State the amount of IEPs that will be looked at nor does it State how many classrooms or types of classrooms will be observed I'm sure that the administration will pick the classrooms that are compliant and so the real problems facing our district are never uncovered how will this help fix the broken system another question I have is why the district's focuses on IEEE requests when in reality a parent is not entitled to an independent evaluation at The District's expense if the district has valid testing a huge elephant in the room is why in the world
058is the audit not looking at outplacements we are spending 3.5 million dollars per year for outplacements and transportation this is a huge number actually five hundred thousand dollars more than last year why is this area not not being a laser focus what is what is the district not capable of providing the audit is only looking at a year back so nothing more than a disaster that the that has been made of the programs for this year will look like they're flourishing here are the questions that I would like to be answered how are parents being picked for the focus group are all IEP and 504 parents getting surveys how is c-rex who is c-rex main contact with the deathstriped are the school leaders involved important and this is highly important that I ask the board
059to consider the report that c-rec finalizes should be reported back to the district leaders Board of Education and the public all at the same time for complete transparency thank you thank you in your uh in your report later you'll be addressing some of the scope of the sure a lot of that would be good um okay next up is Mrs Calera Aaron sclera 5 Jackson Drive I've consistently shown up and spoken out regarding the issues affecting our special education department for well over a year and a half and sadly looking back the issues I started addressing in the very beginning are still very much issues today while I believe that Brookfield has a legal obligation to determine why we are failing to meet our identified and at-risk students needs Brookfield has a bigger moral and
060ethical issue to right the ship so to speak I have met so many families and children whose needs are not being met because they hear me speaking out I will continue to show up and stand here and speak out although I still find it extremely anxiety provoking to do so I sat back like most parents do for the simple fact that I was fearful that it would directly impact my children I am taking the risk not just for my child but for the thousands of other children that will continue to enter this District behind my child and they deserve better than the years of misidentification and failure that my child received I hope it somehow gives parents courage to question their children's programming when they are not finding success or struggling through grade level material
061an audit is absolutely necessary because Brookfield needs to get to the root of why we are failing to meet our students individual needs but an audit will not address the major immediate concern of inadequate leadership in the special education department the new Administration has only further broken trust with parents students and even more concerning and heartbreaking it's now affecting all of our staff we have seen very concerning waves of abrupt resignations and I fear if contracts are renewed we will continue to see staff leaving in record numbers we will soon be opening cles one of the largest elementary schools in the state and we can't retain staff our teachers parents and students of Elementary age should be excited to move in but I fear it'll be a nice new building without the proper supports and
062capable leadership to help our principals and our teachers flourish by no means am I suggesting the lack of leadership being School building principles as they've always gone above and beyond at times playing disaster control and actually getting my child services when it fell on deaf ears with a special education Administration this is not a special adverse General Ed issue this is an issue affecting all of our students and our teachers in closing I'll leave you with a few comments shared with me from present and past staff members I could no longer work in a district that does not support or meet my students educational social or emotional needs I left a job that I once loved because the special education administrators are dismissive condescending and lack any ability to properly staff and service the children
063of this District what time okay no no no no no speak how for you getting on oh okay well I mean okay the special education department is the complete it is a miserable app fear that climate stinks we have no support and children have no consistency so many of my students are not getting the services or supports as written in their IEPs I do not know how much longer I can hang on my entire class is suffering I cannot effectively teach all that I have to and somehow incorporate small group instruction why my identified students sit there acting out because they do not have the staff that should be assigned to them our students are completely disregulated and having meltdowns morale in our school is at an all-time low and this will likely be my
064last year in a school that I once loved teachers and staff are begging us to continue to speak out in hopes that change will eventually happen I think if you were close to being done it'd be okay case it's 21 Meadowview Drive I have been a parent Brookfield for years and now this year we have a special education director referred to us as pokers I have never felt so humiliated and disrespected I will be leaving soon teaching this year has been miserable there's no accountability just complete cover-ups students IEPs are not paid and followed I have never experienced so many young children acting out which is no longer children with challenges it's all of them because I can't run my classroom because Services aren't being met education administrators do not care the kids don't matter
065and I'm unable to tell parents and fear of losing my job I have been thanked for speaking up oh this is for Aaron I have been from Aaron I have been thanked for speaking up because it validates the special ed education I'm looking at other districts because the special ed Administration is toxic and those are some of the quotes that we've received thank you Bob am I allowed to ask the group of parents in a question nope maybe offline offline you can yeah it'll just um just to the extent you do we should all hear it right so I think that's that would be useful so Mr Korea you're next up in Korea 45 West Whiskey Road um I came to voice um my displeasure with the proposal for um the correct special education program
066review proposal um I'd ask I asked the board to vote against it if it comes up for a vote or redirect the administration the primary reason is that the proposal doesn't answer the the questions or the assignment that was directed to the administration the administration asks for multiple proposals we have one um the the I'm sorry the board the board asked for multiple proposals so they have the choice we have one um the the board really went through discussions several meetings but having a comprehensive proposal The Proposal is not comprehensive from my understanding the the board the group that helped review proposals worked very hard and actually were given a constraint that the board did not give them and that was completed by the end of the year my concern with that was that that
067particular constraint that the board didn't give them actually took a couple of proposals out out of consideration because of timing as I think everybody recalls this all started or pushed back on the proposal started in December 14th where we found that the CES proposal was not at all you know comprehensive enough that we brought forward that um the uh the the CES had potential issues in terms of contamination or um conflict of interest and the discussion was you know several other towns have used CES used to others and eventually ended up doing a more comprehensive review and that the board wanted to do with this once do it right it's one shot now now it seems that it's you know let's get this done with arpa funds I think the question is is this the
068right work to do a comprehensive review figure out how to scope it out and then figure out how to pay for it you know stage it out with Arbor funds on the details of the proposal there's several things that are missing there is no no review of State complaints listed nor from what I understand on public listed websites are now we're having Federal investigations by the U.S Department's office of civil rights so yeah we're covering that those they should be in there if we know there's violations we should cover a review should look into it including complaints that end up not being a violation because there's probably best practices in terms of um communicating with parents and you know communicating what the school needs to do in terms of the law The Proposal overall was
069about Equity but not lawfulness we need to at least comply with the law I agree with most of what the other parents said about missing pieces there's two specific things one at thirty five thousand dollars I don't know how we're going to be able to do a comprehensive review and the other there's clear defects like the FERPA file review I don't know how you would could possibly do a FERPA file review unless there's a pile of Student Records in the hallway because most FERPA violations you would have to be able to prove a negative and that's impossible so to ask the board to redirect the and I think the thing that needs to occur is to put more parents on in that group that existing group and pull off administrators and have parents come up
070with what is going to be the an appropriate comprehensive review of parents that have experience as special education parents thank you thank you all right so that's it for uh public comment uh we'll come back to this at the end of the meeting um so I appreciate all the input that you all have provided okay next up is our student representative report hi everyone um so I have a few updates for you all today so the first BHS ptso meeting was held on February 17th and there were about 20 people in attendance they have some great things planned for staff and students so please stay tuned the First Bank of lockers has been removed for the voice for change project their next step is finding a bench and beautifying the wall behind it e Hall
071passed the digital Hall Pass system will be piloted in the next two weeks with students and staff as a student I'm happy to see a decrease in paper waste and just a more resourceful system being utilized parent-teacher conferences will be held on March 9th which is an early dismissal day for students and student government's March Madness dodgeball tournament will be held on March 10th after school the BHS School play The Little Shop of Horrors will be March 16th through the 19th very exciting news they announced they are bringing back the dinner and a show option for March 18th and that day's performance so everybody can visit bhschorus and drama.com for more information about that as far as uh as far as Athletics um the dance team finished second in the state championship this past weekend
072and has qualified for the regional championships in Boston Massachusetts next weekend uh Danny carroza Class M state champion and wrestling qualified for the Regional Championship in Rhode Island this weekend um the boys basketball will play home on Tuesday in the ciac state tournament while hockey will also began their state tournament next week indoor track completed their season last week and had a very successful year with many athletes qualifying for the state championship and stay open gymnastics also completed their season last week with a great season for the girls and did very well in the swc championship finally the cheerleaders and I have our state's championship this weekend thank you all good luck good luck questions all right great I've got to tell you that coach hewling was giving me a blow by blow on the
073track that the track results as they were happening it was a very exciting track meet it really was [Music] okay next up is written correspondence okay Elena Lopez wrote regarding a social emotional learning assessment Kathleen jowdy wrote regarding the covid-19 vaccine Nick Schmidt wrote regarding the covid-19 vaccine policy questions on opt-out cardiac screenings for athletes and school library search issues Denise rice wrote regarding a complaint under policy 1312 Marnie mcniff wrote commending the Sandy Hook promise initiative and the special education review and Irene Korea and Andy Korea wrote regarding concerns with the special education proposal okay thank you next is approval aboard minutes I'll move the board approved the minutes from the regular meeting on February 15th second it's been moved and seconded any issues with the minutes as presented to us okay once again
074very well done from Florida Thank you Lisa all is right in the world Lisa is back in the office all in favor aye okay it's unanimous so uh superintendent's update all right thank you Mr Baldwin um so really we have uh tremendous uh tremendous and exciting news going on so I look forward to sharing some of this and and also a little bit later in the agenda it's uh a great time of year um so the first thing I'd like to share is that our equity and inclusion subcommittee of the board um we last met in August I think at The Retreat as a full board talking about the direction of the the committee um Amy as the chair and I spoke last week and we're going to be meeting uh in April with uh
075the core team which includes uh Rosa and Mike and we certainly invite um Anna and Catherine Abrego our new uh MLL and World Language department chair um we're really excited about that you know in upon reflection I think in talking with some of the the members of the committee we probably took on a little too much and um suffered a little paralysis by analysis in terms of the data we were reviewing and so forth and I think one of the things we want to take a look at is what are some real Focus areas and areas of concern that might be out there that we want to work on um and really go deep on that and really recalibrating and going back to the vision at the start of this in the summer of 2020
076when the board's Vision was really how do we make the Brookfield Public Schools a more welcoming place for all and where students and families could feel like they belong and so kind of getting back to that so we're excited about that and we'll get the core team together and look at directions so I wanted to update everybody on that really exciting news you'll recall back what was it Keith Johnson and Catherine Abrego brought this to Dean and Anna and me back in the early fall and after April break the French exchange students will be coming over and being with host um whiskey near families and visiting for a week at whiskaneer so we're really excited about that program and I just can't thank our staff enough for being welcoming and open to that and thank
077you Dean for all your organization there with Catherine and Keith I do have some covet and flu update numbers for you from Mrs laforge our nursing coordinator we're in a really healthy place here in the schools this is as of Monday at CES positive student cases for covid one and four positive staff cases and for flu only two positive student cases that's it at Huckleberry for covid two positive cases and one positive for students and one positive staff and for flu no cases at Huckleberry at Whiskey near right now we have four students who are positive and for covid and one staff member positive and for fluid whistoneer only one case and that's a student and then at the high school for covid there are three students that are positive one staff member that is
078positive and for flu no reported cases so I want to make sure everybody had that my next report is on next item excuse me is on security really excited about what I can report to you here on security just as a reminder for everybody there are four pillars of security we often talk about structural or the physical parts of the building technology faculty and staff training and law enforcement and in terms of support from law enforcement the training is going on right now this week with our armed school security officer for the evening here at Brookfield High School that onboarding will be happening and then you'll get to meet our new person next next board meeting and that gentleman is I have it over here our new um he's a former Mr Rogowski his name
079is Wayne regalsi he's a retired Connecticut state trooper and he's really looking forward to getting started and he works to remind everybody the armed school security officer Works underneath the auspices of the police department although they work here at the school and in concert with School administration and staff so we're really looking forward to getting Mr rogalski on board probably as soon as on his own after the onboard he's done by next week and then um he'll be joining our evening Security Officer Rick Ferreira who's already been on board so we're really excited about that the other piece on security I did want to share is our insurance carrier towns have an insurance carrier for the most part called kerma and our insurance carrier had a free vulnerability assessment that they were able to offer
080us and can organized it and we were able to have all four schools stress tested if you will not only on kind of Staff culture and training but on the physical security of the building happy to report that we've seen a draft report from them that has commendations and recommendations going forward for planning that report is with security it's not necessarily subject to foi so it's something we'll talk to the security task force about in executive session however there are certain things that are public that we're doing with security some of their recommendations for us and nobody was able to get in they were on full lockout they really commended us on that so that work is fantastic um but and this was an unannounced visit the um the really the amazing things that are
081going on in their recommendations they talked about some physical things we could do door alarms on the doors if they're open or ajar security film on the first floor protective kind of ballistic Intruder resistant film uh more cameras and what was the other one there was another one there that I wanted to share with everybody yes in bollards um you know the the physical stanchion so vehicle traffic can't get into the main areas and so forth and so they recommended we look into that and move forward on that we already have those as Capital Improvements and we just talked about a facilities committee earlier tonight so really excited about that so that's a brief security update and then the last item I have I actually am going to turn it over to um Dr Mann
082we really want to follow up on something that I think was really important after the um uh report card that we talked about the district report card in the next gen presentation that Dr Mann did last time Joy brought up some uh interesting things thinking about uh homework and study skills and some other things like that and we've done some follow-up with the principals and I wanted Anna talk a little bit about that because it's actually really exciting so thank you very much also based on uh the points brought up by Mrs Greenstein after my presentation on next-gen accountability report last time I wanted to follow up with the board um specifically regarding the concerns about a level of rigor particularly in the middle school and kind of building up to high school preparedness study
083skills as well as other important transferable skills like time management and how that can be seen through homework and as I said as Joy brought up last time you know preparedness from middle school to high school and then high school and Beyond which is something we're going to be talking about you know with our strategic plan and the Strategic area of focus as we go through it forward so after speaking a little bit more with um Mrs Greenstein about this we've both begun speaking with the principals and to look at areas from kind of a district Viewpoint this is what I'm going to be committed to over the next couple months to year you know I'm looking at things from a district area focus and then and down to the school level kind of you
084know between the two schools and that kind of Continuum of practice and instructional approaches um all the way to the content areas and grade levels to really think about you know what are the uh and something you're going to hear about with the Strategic plan um is kind of that uh you know those assured experiences in in classrooms but also uh you know meeting the needs of individual students based on their performance in class so I know that we'll be working on that in terms of a Continuum of kind of instructional Focus but also as we move forward uh you know a curriculum review and um thinking about what are we what is our approach to curriculum review and how does that impact the instruction and assessment experiences so I've already spoken with um Dr
085Mike about how Cape can be a part of this uh you know this kind of oversight and this review as we go forward we will continue to address the learning loss which has been a as we've said earlier main focus of the work that we've been doing doing this year through a variety of ways including specifically enhancing vertical articulation so making sure that teachers are have the opportunities to speak with one another between the various grade levels so that teachers know what they're preparing their students for and ensuring that Mr belanda has shared that he's identified that school counselors between the Middle School and High School have had the opportunity this year in particular to to talk about student skills and have noted as Mrs Greenstein kind of identified that there is definitely need for
086support with executive functioning and those kind of you know kind of transferable skills and that can be certainly something that we can Target with 9th and 10th grade teachers to see what what the follow-through is now that we're getting toward the second half of the year of this year and so the administrators both building and the content leaders will focus on this throughout the spring and through team and teacher curriculum meetings and Mr Renda also has provided some a variety of resources that are currently in use but also is committed to kind of looking at those and making sure that they are meeting the needs of our students now post pandemic and making sure that we are continuing to focus on this level of rigor so that we can make sure that not only our
087next Generation availability accountability report card goes up but also we're really preparing our kids for Life Beyond public school and so you know this is definitely going to be something that we're keeping on the front burner and um you know you're going to as I said you're going to see kind of hints of this and reflections of this in the Strategic plan work but I do want to thank Miss Greenstein for bringing this up and so that we have the opportunity to really dialogue about it as we go forward and that's all I had I didn't know if there was any questions or we're okay I have one question just um on security and I apologize if it was already mentioned in the say something presentation but can you refresh my memory when the say
088something app will when the training is going to happen and when it will go live because I'm probably going to go in the three main points yeah yeah it's smart um Eric has a better sense of the dates but it's all it's all coming over the next couple of weeks yeah um I'll I'll give you some quick dates um but I will say that they're fluid it's all based on um yeah it's all it's all based on staff training and then when we can get the students trained and um it looks like winter finally came so maybe some snow days who knows um right now the target is March 20th to go live but again that's going to be flexible the goal is the end of the month so when would training be uh Mark
089and Dean have you guys worked on any training dates yet for the students we're still in the staff phase of this yeah I'm sorry to put you guys on the spot but we're not quitting at that that's okay just so everybody understands and Eric and I actually worked in concert on uh Friday afternoon there were some glitches with the virtual online training that we all have to go through the staff that's going to be involved so we're part of District staff their school level staff and so there was some some it was a little glitchy by Friday and so all the staff that are on the different school teams and District team have to be trained before What's called the tip test can be done and then we actually go through the tip test and
090so while that was supposed to happen this week that got pushed off it looks like till next Tuesday uh or Wednesday as I understand so it's just pushing it off a little bit so that's part of it we're hoping and then next one to two months that students might be able to start using it yes okay yes it's a spring implementation and then we'll really get the kids up and running with it and it'll become part of the fabric of the district probably by the end of the year but definitely as we progress through next year there's no doubt about it perfect thank you thanks Eric I appreciate that any other questions for Dr parole on this report all right hearing none we'll move on um so I would observe that our our public speaker
091who is speaking at the uh not on a agenda item normally we would put that at the end of the night but since the student and it's a school night um we I think it would be good if we invited him up to speak now so I would make a motion uh well is there any objection to doing that no okay with that without objection then I will add a special student public speaking moment and Kyle you're invited to come up Dr Brew we'll show you how to organize the microphone and make this easy for you all right hi my name is Kyle McNally I'm a fall student sorry my name is Kyle McNally I am a student at West Gainer Middle School in the seventh grade before I go any further I would like
092to thank our fellow board members here for doing a sped review on our school districts today I am here to talk about my special needs and support in the classroom in the IEP my IEP invite individualized education plan it states that I am to receive five times per week for 45 minutes in literacy class that has been very inconsistent due to Staffing shortages over the past few months sometimes there is someone there in class but they're only for a portion of the class because of staff extraordinates sometimes there is yeah sorry my words you just had to balance 21 kids including all the requirements the special needs students having classroom teacher as well as the other students they've tried their hardest to put themselves in there but it's only lasts maybe two days to a
093week so it hasn't lasted that long I will say this there are some days when I leave my classroom that I am a seventh grader I'm nervous because my question wasn't answered and I've been confused on the assignment sometimes and that's like difficult for someone like me so we are struggling here at WMS of the IEPs and according to Canada law it is illegal to not follow an IEP it is actually a suitable offense but so at Western Middle School team 7A would like to have a consistent person there to help us so I'm asking the board to consider this and maybe give us some more pairs or even financial support to hire more people from ESS thank you for your time today thank you very much I appreciate it okay so uh we will
094thank you very much for coming this evening Kyle I appreciate that okay next up is uh subcommittee reports Finance Rosa I'll turn it over to you okay um meeting on February 13th we financial report we are as you know still over budget um this um by about 718 000 slightly better than my report in the previous month in one area where we are slightly worse is in our teacher turnover savings and where we are slightly better than last month is in health benefits as the cost for security monitors can be charged to the RPS or Grant um we have locked in pricing for heating oil and diesel fuel so our overages there are known figures and that is contributing about 330 000 to that budget overrun we also reviewed the pay rate guidelines for special
095programs such as athletic events testing Proctors and social events like the 8th grade dinner dance the committee had some questions there and requested a follow-up at our next meeting which is on the 13th okay any questions for Rosa I will uh just a bit of news I talked to Mrs Carr this morning and she has asked us to start coming regularly to the board of selectman meeting to give an update on our overruns much like we've been doing to the board of Finance because in the end at the end of the year of the board of Selectmen actually have to vote on the special appropriation to move the contingency money from the town side to the school side for the overrun and they felt like they were not up to date enough on it so
096I said I would be very glad to go or if I can't Rose I may ask you if you would cover on that but every month at the beginning of each month they have a meeting and I told them we would keep them up and then I sent that out to everybody Ken's latest update just this morning um so okay next is policy and Communications Dan yep we met on February 15th and we continued working through the required policies that need updating so we started with um policy 6162.51 which is the survey policy that we've been working on for a while now and we continued discussing it we want to do a little bit more research and talk again at our next meeting so we're going to continue those discussions at our March 15th meeting
097um after that we discussed policy 5125 which is the FERPA policy and also policy 5131.911 which is bullying um for both of those policies we will be recommending that we replace the existing policy with cabe's version and we're sending those to the board for a first read on March 15th so you'll see those at the next meeting for policy 5144.1 that's restraint and seclusion Mrs D Nicola Hickman joined us for the discussion and after receiving her input we decided to recommend some new language that you will see when it comes to you for a first read I also next meeting March 15th as you Bob mentioned earlier we had a discussion about our policy regulation and bylaws pertaining to public comment and we decided that we needed to do some research on that so Amy
098um was kind enough to spearhead that effort and do some research with other districts and we're going to continue our discussions on March 15th and then we ran out of time so unfortunately we had to table all of our topics under communication which was uh the budget flyer the Strategic plan and the Kenwood Lake Elementary School ribbon cutting so we'll talk about those at our next meeting okay thank you any questions for Debbie all right thank you Debbie yep all right so we're now moving uh oh it's I'm sorry consent agenda I'll move that the board approve the items on the consent agenda which are new hires resignations retirements and the January financials second has moved and seconded Dr Brill do you have any comments you'd like to make on the yeah I have two
099um I'm really excited for Dave Giddings uh he's one of our ABA pairs at CES he is he was with us on a shorter term basis he is pursuing his Finance career and uh he's moving on so we're really excited for him um and Mrs O'Connor while it's great news for Mrs O'Connor our nurse at Center School we will certainly miss her um Beth O'Connor has another grandbaby on the way and has decided it is time for her to retire and she has been with the district since 1999 and of those 24 years 22 years as a nurse is my understanding in terms of her breakdown of time we can't thank her enough for her love stability expertise and Leadership always but especially the last few years all of our nurses with the work through
100covet and everything else we had to do so we were going to miss her dearly it was a wonderful meeting when she came up to the office and we chatted about things and she showed me a lot of pictures and she is excited so um Beth if you're out there we're thinking of you and really happy for you you know grandparents do like to show lots of pictures to speak from I speak from knowledge there's a lot of a lot of grandparent thing going on this uh this year a lot of that going on um and that was all I had thinking about any other comments from the board all right um all in favor of approving the consent agenda any opposed all right it's unanimous um okay uh so we're moving on to new
101business now we've done item a already the Sandy Hook promise presentation so the second item on our new business is the Strategic plan presentation I will move that the board approved the 2023 through 2028 strategic plan as recommended by superintendent Dr John Burrell and the strategic planning committee second okay it's been moved and seconded um while Eric's getting it set up let me just make a couple of comments first of all I served on that committee and I I've said this before but I'm going to say it again it was a cool committee right there were like 30 people on this committee and Debbie and I were the two board members on the committee and you really felt it when there's a 30-person committee and you're one you're you're two of them I we were
102part of the machine that was going on and what was really neat about it it was parents it was students it was teachers it was Paris it was coaches it was administrators there I think we Eric was there for I.T we had such a broad group but more importantly everybody spoke right there was not there wasn't a shrinking violin in the bunch I don't think and we worked in different groups and it was really well coordinated so it was a fun committee to be on I just will say that up front the second I think I got to say is just an administrative thing the strategy is one of the most important things we need to approve right and we'll talk a little bit about the last one John and I talked about that this
103morning when we met um they last with us a long time they will last past many of our terms on this board they usually five six years they set the stage for it if anybody on our board says I want more time to review it before we approve it we can table the approval right I just want to say that up front we don't have to approve it tonight right if you've had a chance to read it we I will ask after the presentation if everybody's comfortable approving it tonight but I just want to set that up but any one of us could say I would like another two weeks I like another month to read through the material maybe ask some questions that's okay we do that on policies all the time um I'm
104not hung I'm not trying to force an approval through because this is it's not important that we approve it in this one meeting so I just want to set that that seed for all of you as we're listening to Dr Burrell so John with the with that that comment made I'll turn it over to you to do the presentation on this I appreciate that and I thank you Bob and Debbie for serving for our principals and uh other leaders who are a part of that committee and I'll get to that as as part of the presentation um as we think about strategic action in the in the plans we have it's it's it's incredibly exciting um I'm one who comes up here and talks about the budget and I'm excited about talking about the budget
105because the budget really as I always say is the financial plan and it's the financial statement of values for going forward and as our plans going forward I really I love doing that I love deploying resources I love working with our leaders and our teams uh to make things really happen and take very strong and strategic action to support our students at the same time with a strategic plan we are this is something we've been thinking about and been on a bit of a pause for a couple of years because of the pandemic there's been so many other things going on and so we're going to take a little walk in history as well before I get to the to the the kickoff slide I want everybody to think about we are always thinking about
106the future we we don't live in the past we're in the moment but and we're pragmatic but we're always thinking long term into the future and that's our responsibility as educational leaders and our board education our kindergarten class right now is going to graduate in 2035. so just think about what technology was like just three years ago when we could barely think of having a virtual meeting and we ended up running school from home not that it was certainly the most effective thing but the things we do the technology that changes um social mores and attitudes the things that change and change so fast we have to be Thinking Beyond 12 years from now for our current kindergartners because you don't magically snap your fingers and talk about a phrase like portrait of The Graduate
107when students become freshmen or sophomores here at Brookfield High School you have to be thinking about that all the way from when they enter school so really it's uh it's an exciting time but I want to talk about for a second why do we need strategies in the first place strategies are really important to us they prepare any Organization for the future they guide District actions they provide stability for for organizations and school districts they serve as a common framework or common language they provide and support District alignment both internally and externally and they certainly could help demonstrate the uniqueness of a particular organization or a particular School District strategies are not a to-do list of specific minutia actions in every aspect of the organization they are Broad and bigger picture ideas and action oriented
108Foci to get us moving in a particular direction and then the big question is well then how do and how do we apply strategies and this this document you can see here to the right this graphic it works back and forth if we're going toward the portrait of The Graduate we've talked about the Brookfield C's critical and creative thinking collaboration communication and change making our portrait of The Graduate that is that is the driving why and what we are doing toward our vision of being a world-class system then we have to get into the what strategic planning what are going to be those action items to get to the portion of the graduate and that starts Pre-K and then we work through a district implementation plan School Improvement plans at all of our schools department
109and grade level work whether that's in curriculum instruction or programs all kinds of things that go on in the Department's grade level and of course Community engagement and it's back and forth and up and down and always a continuous Improvement cycle and so that is a graphic that helps people understand what we're trying to do with strategies in a strategic plan what I'd like to do is take a step back to when the board voted and approved the the initial strategic plan back in 2016 believe it or not and we it was a five-year plan and then like I said earlier we're on a bit of a pause with the pandemic as we were working toward getting ready for the actions over the last six months and so we had four key strategies in the
110in the last plan goals for learning teaching for learning measures for Learning and systems and structures quickly going to talk about goals for learning we really had a focus on what do we teach and so we worked on standards-based curricula really going deep on that curriculum but also broadly addressing standards in addition to that looking at all of the different tools Ela math technology social studies Sciences there's so many different curricular tools and programs and course offerings we also had a look at how we were teaching so that's the focus on professional learning really focused on a lot with reading and expansion of instructional strategies you've heard phrases or common strategy of gradual release and responsibility working toward learning targets authentic learning experiences Dr Mann started to talk a little bit about that and of
111course student engagement measures for learning developing faculty capacity in assessment that was really important that we could meet our students where they're at and then adjust instruction to meet their needs and then beyond that using that data and data teams to understand and look at broader Trends as well as individual student needs and then finally systems and structures there was a lot we had to do back in 2016 to address the prior two years in terms of Financial and Regulatory control really looking to improve all of our facilities they were hurting quite a bit and we put a lot of plans in a lot of investment we ended up with a plan to construct the new school which we'll be moving into shortly always looking toward enhancing security and improving our technology infrastructure we did
112a lot there is a detailed backup slide in this PowerPoint that has more highlights of some of those things that were accomplishments that's at the end of the slideshow and I will not go over all of that so strategic context preparing the modern Workforce this is what we really need to think about we are currently preparing students for jobs that don't yet exist using technologies that haven't been invented excuse me in order to solve problems we don't even know our problems yet and that's from a former Secretary of Education and this was said about 20 years ago and so we need to and it was when people were talking about 21st century and I've got news for everybody we're 23 through the 21st century so we need to be future focused so a little bit
113of context and skill when we think about the future of the digital Workforce and the things we need to get our students ready for and those dispositions that will stay with them long Beyond schooling that we could start on um Pre-K the context that I'm going to share with you now these are slides from Jonathan Costa Mr Costa's been with the board several times he's a long time friend of Brookfield he works for Med Advance he is the assistant superintendent there and he's a facilitator for strategic plans all over the state in fact he's working with the State Department of Education on a state level strategic plan uh John went on a nice vacation with his wife and exposures to covet and so he did not want to come here and expose us to covet
114so he was very considerate but we if he's watching we wish him well so I'm going to share a couple of his slides where he built context for the strategic planning team and I'll share that with with everybody now so obviously the the big goal is to prepare our students for Life Learning and work Beyond School and something the pandemic taught us um is is really the size and scope of the digital Workforce will continue to expand we saw the transition to digital Tools digital learning and all of those things we needed to do virtually digitally and all of the tools that were available to our students the other thing the pandemic taught us and I I really have to say this is how important the school is as a central foundational organization and uh
115entity for communities it's so important we all lost connection and and we're adults as students we we talk about it all the time how much connection they lost and uh Anna just mentioned it earlier the kind of thinking through the reset the relaunch that we're working on this year and addressing learning recovery and all the things we're doing for them and of course the social and emotional and the mental health concerns we need to be addressing and so we are an important very important uh entity for our students and for our communities and the digital Workforce going forward will be expanding and we learn that having said that we could remember it wasn't that long ago when we're in 3G and to download a two hour film took 26 hours and then when we went
116to 4G it took six minutes and in 2020 it's now 5G is now the norm 3.6 seconds to download a two hour movie so technology is just rapidly that's why I go back to our kindergartners and think about them in 12 years what it what is this slide even going to look like or will this be irrelevant again Technologies we haven't been invented and solving problems we don't even know our problems yet uh AI artificial intelligence algorithms robots if you're not creative and you can't adapt and you can't critically think you're going to have a hard time in the future this is all about being a problem solver not a problem Creator or a problem finder a problem solver and these dispositions that we're going to talk about the Brookfield season a little bit are
117key elements of that here's a slide that's of interest that Jonathan showed us from the mckinski McKinsey Global Institute and here it really talks about physical and manual skills through basic cognitive skills to higher level thinking to the softer skills of Social and emotional skills and interpersonal relationships and Technology skills and it shows in billions of hours back in 2016 and what it's going to look like by 2030 and some different models there and you can see that social and emotional skills higher level thinking skills and technical skills continue to increase those needs and so then the big question is when you look at a bell curve what happens when the workforce skill distribution looks like this where our kids are not ready for the future and the bulk of us are in the big
118middle there but the job opportunities actually look like this and so we need to prepare our students with the Brookfield seas that we'll be getting into in a second with either the high high design and emotional intelligence and Leadership and creativity and technical skills to work on that right side of the chart entrepreneurial skills and similarly bringing that to the left side excuse me to the left side of the chart Jonathan used a great example with the team have you have you tried to find an electrician lately the high skill of any of the high-tech manufacturing electrician Tradesmen that are using higher level thinking using technology also their entrepreneurial skills and their customer service skills those complex Hands-On tests will also be in high demand so we want to make sure our students have dispositions
119and skills that could cut across all areas so they're ready to go when they leave us for technical education military career college whatever their choices might be so continuing to move forward on that the actual strategic plan development I wanted to walk you through the portrait of the graduate which leads us to the Brookfield seas that we continue to talk about so I have to thank Dr Mann for Designing her little globe with the cap on it as we talk about the portrait of The Graduate we really want to demonstrate this for people visually when we talk about critical thinking we need to be planning and thinking about what does it look like to actually display critical thinking we're going to have to Define that in our district implementation plan as part of our big
120strategy here creative thinking what does it look like to display creative thinking how about being a collaborator how is collaboration measured we talked at the last meeting during the presentation of the school report card the next gen presentation and we talked about the difference between collaboration and cooperation and so we need to be able to Define that and how does that work with our curriculum communicating in how many ways can communication be demonstrated you know communication isn't just speaking it's listening it's writing it's reading it's viewing there's a lot that goes into communication so how do we incorporate that into total literacy and change making what are the possibilities for positive change so these are some big picture questions we need to be asking when we think of the portrait of the graduate in those
121Brookfield C's so a little bit about the process Bob talked about it it was really a great team of people 30 uh either 29 31 it was a mixture but we had a mixture of students and para Educators and administrators and teachers and parents it was really a great group broke into many different groups went out into the community did some surveys did focus groups really talk to constituents we also had a variety of stakeholder input through thought exchange that tool probably about a year ago we had put out the thought exchange tool several times collected a lot of input from folks and like I said some surveys and focus groups during the process when the team went out and worked with with the community in addition to that I want you to see that
122the participants are listed on page three and four of the Strategic plan there is a link within the PowerPoint which will be published for everybody where it says strategic plan 2328 that is the actual strategic plan it has all the details there for everyone it's there I mentioned Mr Costa was our facilitator and did a great job with us a real friend to the district we really appreciate his expertise and I talked about how we're going to be in alignment with the state department of Ed but also with caps the Connecticut Association of public school superintendents has put out a blueprint I've it's been published and I've online and I've shared it with the board probably a year ago or so but we're really in a the Brookfield plan is in alignment with those larger
123State plans and of course we're strengthening our foundation our original plan those things I was talking about with you earlier in the presentation there was a lot of blocking and tackling and fundamentals there with assessment and reading and curricular tools and and how to properly run the organization and that academic achievement doesn't go anywhere that is a foundation we've worked on we're going to continue to move forward on that with lots of rigor and lots of energy in addition to professional development and making sure we're accountable for results so what are the key objectives of the Strategic plan how do we make the Brookfield C's critical and creative thinking communicating change making and collaboration how does that become a part of the DNA of the school system and so to make that part of the
124fabric of the school system the team all 30 people over the six month period arrived at four new strategies that are going to build on those four former strategies I talked about and those strategies are full integration of the Brookfield Seas authentic learning experiences digital learning tools and systems and structures I'm just going to break those down and go through that with you right now so strategy one is really about pre-k through 12 defining the Brookfield C's and making sure our students are prepared for life and learning Beyond school getting ready for that in strategy two and I'm going to go into a little more detail on a couple of slides in strategy two the district will meet the needs of our students Pre-K to 12 and go beyond the school walls incorporating authentic learning
125experiences assured learning experiences that are personalized with personalized instructional practices excuse me aligned with the Brookfield C's strategy three is about technology and digital tools and making sure that when we have conversations and develop curriculum develop learning experiences for students we're always talking about how does how does technology fit into that are there digital tools that can help Advance learning and so we want to make sure we're really focused on that and then the last one is going back to the concept of systems and structures we need to make sure that our systems and structure in the district are continually improving but focused on supporting the portrait of The Graduate to ensure the best quality education for our students so in strategy one full integration of the Brookfield sees the team the 30 participants of
126parents and students and administrators and teachers and Paras and so forth that were on the team came up with key areas and these happen to be five areas here of indicators of success so I'm going to go through those Brookfield sees they get clearly defined pre-k through 12. what does that look like in each of the grade levels in each of the subjects there are clear performance standards or benchmarks for each of the Brookfield C's and so that's a way that we measure those or kids can demonstrate those dispositions the Brookfield sees are explicitly integrated into the curriculum at all the grade levels I kind of already alluded to that the Brookfield C's are assessed at necessary checkpoints um kind of the standard checkpoints that we want to look at is grade 5 8 and
12711 with the opportunity in 12 to demonstrate mastery clearly you can see that's the end of the different School levels Elementary Middle High and then students show growth over time of course the second strategy of aligning authentic learning experiences with the Brookfield Seas for big time indicators of success there and each of these indicators success will have detailed uh District implementation plans underneath them there's a lot of work that goes with these and again this is a Five-Year Plan uh professional development for District staff specific to connecting Brookfield C's to classroom and school experiences and the various roles has been designed and implemented you know a a grade one teacher a high school physics teacher and a social worker will have very different ways of looking at the Brookfield C's and integrating them into the
128work that they do making sure that rigorous vertically aligned standards-based curriculum is connected to the Seas and has been designed and implemented that research-based instructional and assessment practices are assured for each student and have been designed and implemented and then Universal real world Community connections are in place and you've heard Mrs Ferris at different times especially recently this year with that great grade one program she talked about the writing opportunity but as the Director of instruction really over the years has talked about authentic learning experiences and really taking learning from the foundational work further into kind of that change making concept and how you can make a difference in with the community the third strategy of incorporating uh digital learning tools into instruction has other uh other indicators of success curriculum writing will include digital
129tools for learning components so we're going to actually purposely when curriculum is designed say how do the digital tools work in this particular area periodic surveys and feedback uh from our staff to understand how they're doing with technology making sure PD is prioritized for digital learning for our staff Educators being provided with real world professional learning opportunities to understand how technology is used or can be used and that you know you think about we've heard about Jackie our technology integration Specialists that's that real-time embedded professional learning that we're talking about there so it's not just add a workshop they're actually working on it with kids at the time of course budget priorities making sure that we are investing in digital tools for learning which this board has been tremendous about our community has been tremendous
130about the district will work to anticipate and integrate new tools and that's is really and being very intentional about those new tools and then finally enhancing our existing systems and structures indicators of success well-controlled financial and operational management continued development of Technology infrastructure that's something I think about cyber security Eric and all of the access you've helped provide us over the years efficient and well-maintained Facilities timely and user-friendly Communications community and staff engagement and that's you know things like updating the website and how do we use social media and those kinds of things school security continuously enhancing our our protocols and our facilities board policies that support teaching and learning and I added a little piece here for people to really understand some of the ongoing things that are happening right now and some of
131them were talked about tonight already in terms of getting ready to to have those system supports and structures in place we have a number of collaboration and partners and they help us with strategic actions we're having various studies and and reviews done to help design not only complement us where we're doing well so we can continue to do that but help us move forward with recommendations or ideas for improvement so for example the only internal one really is our Candlewood Lake planning team that's a collaboration I think it was about 25 of our team and Dave obviously is an enormous part of that really supporting the transition not only the physical move but really the team is working on developing a brand new school culture that was alluded to tonight so that's really exciting I
132mean how many of us get to be involved with actually building a brand new from the ground up school and bringing three different staffs together and it's an incredible undertaking and an exciting opportunity uh krek is working for the special education program view they've already actually started their work this week and we'll talk about that under old business uh ciac that's the athletic governing body uh they're working toward an athletic program review with Mr Baldwin and Mr belanda at the high school and we talked a little bit about that in some recent board meetings uh just today as a matter of fact Mark's akubo it's a architectural firm they're going to be conducting our building condition study Mr Caldwell and Mr post met with them they're going to really dig deep on the physical structure
133of both wistoneer and Brookfield High School and by May 31st have a capital plan for us of what needs to be done to improve those buildings over the coming years I mentioned the vulnerability assessment from Karma um and and that's a tremendous support for us looking forward by the end of the month we should have the full report there and of course working with the Connecticut Center for school state safety as one of their first clients in terms of giving us training and so forth to make sure our Protocols are up to speed me ask here's an interest in what New England Association of schools and colleges Pre-K to 12 program reviews so Mr belanda coincidentally today actually submitted his five-year update from the last niask visit when we think about accreditation and yes we
134think about high school but most folks don't know that niask actually offers opportunity to use that same framework in reflecting upon the practices at elementary and middle school and Dr Mann brought Dean and Dave with her to Boston before the holidays yeah yeah back in December and they actually went to a seminar and learned about me asking what the visits look like and are pretty enthusiastic about it so we've got some detail work to do there and there is a budget implication but we want to we want to talk about that a little bit more and then you know Cabe is helping us with the policy services and we don't have a firm yet but we need to be working on an enrollment study and that'll be something next year we'll be talking about in
135the budget process so as we bring this all back together I'm taking six months of work and honing it into about 20 slides the approach to implementation we want to have a world-class school system that's what we want to create and you've seen the the portrait of The Graduate diagram that is what we are working toward that is our inspiration and our why the what is working forward toward a strategic plan to help us get there and we'll work through the district implementation planning School Improvement planning obviously Department grade level work it takes all of us to do this and working with our Community Partners and Community engagement our families and it's a back and forth exercise some of our next steps people might be wondering so where do you start we need board approval
136Bob talked a little bit about that we have a great subcommittee structure here for our board with our Cape committee and our finance committee and all of our subcommittees do a great job of distributive leadership and so we need to engage and work with the leadership of our our different subcommittees to help support this effort of course staff communication and engagement family communication engagement Communications about the Strategic plan will be going out we need to get this out as part of three main points likely Debbie and that kind of a thing and we'll be have ongoing engagement and communication regarding the plan right away we need to find Define each disposition of the program uh the portrait of The Graduate that is something that's going to be kicking off right away Dr Mann will help
137um architect essentially in working with building Administration or teacher teams and those teacher leaders that are very interested in working on this to actually Define that for us across the district and down through the grade levels and in the subject areas and then working through to develop the district implementation plan which would be a plan that we would Implement to start the school year next year and of course really focused on curriculum integration as we talked about in the instructional application uh and then ultimately the assessment of the skills I thank you for your time you certainly could chat about it and I can invite any of the team that was on the on the committee to come and talk as well all right so sometimes you're you feel like you've uh you've lived it
138over and over again um and uh you know I know I know I lived through six months of doing this we brushed through the top surface of this in this lot in this very short presentation I'll just say that the thing I will add is that when we were in having the discussion about the portrait of The Graduate the Educators were deep into how do I make that real in third grade how do I make that real in um in wood shop right how do I make that real in my sports right you know so that there's a constant thought that we need to take kids and give them deep skills on the the Brookfield C so that they can deal with that future right because what what Mr Costa said is the the future
139being relatively undefined because it's rate and pace of Technology what you need is kids who can roll with it if I could say that they they know how to go engage and it might be that they're a teacher and trying to think through what am I doing with my kids for the year 2050 right they might be in any types of uh role but if they can't engage and collaborate and be critically thinking and know how to do all of those types of skills where as jobs come forward they won't be able to do it and that's not something you teach as a class in 12th grade it's something that you incorporate in every little thing that we do and I think that was for me it was really interesting watching the Educators themselves having
140that discussion that very discussion and uh and uh and that's what this is about this is about giving the set of skills that will let our youth become adults when we need them to but also to be the sort who can engage on a changing world right which I think is really cool so so that's uh and sometimes that's it's hard to capture that in a short presentation it really is and for us as a board the question I'm going to ask us is how do we change what we do here right you know should you know we should be looking at our agenda and how are we saying okay what are we what are we doing on change making right you know as and what you know we'd like to have a report on
141that right or we'd like to have a spotlight on collaboration we'd like to um what in our budget right that we're looking at are supporting these things you know where are we on technology not just technology because we got a new display tool that someone can use but how are we teaching kids to use technology effectively right you know how's that in our and things so there's a lot of work to be done on but I think it's what we do as a board we'll set the tone of you know what are we putting on our agenda what are we doing in the cape committee right what are we doing in facilities and finance you know to talk about these things always um and uh I think that's uh that's part of the challenge of
142a strategy is it's very General at this point and John and his staff's challenge is how do you turn General into specific over time right and with a very deliberate you know uh approach so that's I'm gonna get off my soapbox and are there any questions the board has for Dr Burrell on this um maybe just for the committee in general but tonight I was just kind of listening to actually Bob what you were just saying but um not that I think a c is missing but I would like to know where sort of because I think what we what we always talk about is how do we make teachers be continuous Learners how to make students be continuous Learners and there's this this curiosity that we're trying to like build in because that's that's
143essentially the skill that's going to let them roll with whatever new comes along right like just the ability to say okay well I don't know this I'm gonna go learn it um where is that is that somehow captured in sort of the Seas that we have yeah you want to give it a go sure that's blood terrified um well I think that's that kind of outlines the work that we have to do right when fleshing out the Brookfield sees um you know this concept of the the outline of the portrait of The Graduate was developed a while ago um but it they are not um you know kind of exclusive to other transferable skills and pieces that build on that so I would say I mean just off the kind of off the top of
144my head I would say that definitely within change making if you don't if you're not curious about possible problem solving then you're not going to get to that change maker so I can see how that would be um a portion of that fleshing out um you know one of the having done this work before one of the uh the things that teachers are going to be looking for is that measurability piece yeah and so what does it look like to support the development of that but also how am I going to measure that so that's going to be as we work through this you know development um I think that curiosity is definitely there are probably a whole bunch of other kind of um components of these dispositions that are you're going to see get
145fleshed out yeah I think we see evidence of it at least um by the presentations made especially those Littles in the elementary school who did that opinion and that was incredible critical thinking working together and I really think they knew exactly what the goal was they wanted to be wanted their voices heard so I think that at least in this District we're starting all of these strategies and I'm confident that we'll get there and it was great it was communicating and ultimately changed me they got their extra recess well and it started with a question right so that's the question why do first graders not get so that was a curious question that predicated everything any other questions great this is great so thank you John um so let me ask you all do you
146you all got not only the presentation material that John had but the written document that uh that kind of had a lot of more a little bit in the next layer of detail if I if I could I don't know if you how I had a chance to read it but are you all prepared to approve this as a strategy at this point or do you want to have it take time and read it and then come back I just opposed I started the conversation with that what do you think I read it on my story you read it on a snow day you didn't get to ski upwards okay all right sounds like we're all ready to approve it so all in favor of approving the strategy against all right it's unanimous all right
147so John we're ready to go to work we're looking forward to getting our first status report on it um and uh it sounds like the first major task is about definition oh yeah right and what does it really mean to you know flush this out and that'll take a little bit of time but uh and we'll uh as we develop agendas maybe in the spring here we could practice a little bit fitting strategies onto our agenda items because I think that's a that's an effort we need to look at as we're talking about Bob yep okay uh so now we're going to move on to Old business um uh next item on the agenda is a special education program review update and the action is to receive an update from Dr Burrell good okay so
148um the uh crack um was uh there was full consensus that correct would be the um firm that we would work with going forward for the program review everybody has seen the scope of work uh in the exhibit for the board packet and um has authorized a couple of meetings back I followed the selection committee's selection and engaged with crack so they have already started planning with us this week and we are moving forward and already starting to look at dates for focus groups look at dates for survey distribution and school visits there's I think in the in the scope of work 24 and a half days with four uh different people working on this project this spring with a full public report as it's culminating event presented to the board at the June board
149meeting really what's exciting about it is the the uh areas that were brought up and even some of the areas that were brought up um tonight during public comment like IEP compliance and looking at uh independent education evaluations uh looking at regular ed students and identification and intervention um uh are all part of the scope of work the interesting thing the folks from crack are very experienced in doing this and when firms like this or knee ask or any anybody else who comes in and when they ask questions and they receive answers and they engage with the public and they engage with staff there will be responses that they may not have anticipated and that may take them down a different course of action in terms of the kinds of questions they ask or where
150they might look next so while there is a agreed upon scope of work it is iterative there is flexibility in you know we have an issue here we're going to go explore this a little bit further because we're quite curious about it um and and so on and and that that goes on so um that's just to answer some general questions that's the update in terms of them getting started I really did want to give credit to the selection committee there were a number of staff and folks that worked to go through the four different firms that gave us proposals and the selection committee was made of Mr post our business Direct after he had actually been through one of these program reviews in his former district and of course has budget implications Dr pepsoski
151our Huckleberry and Candlewood Lake principal Mr Conklin our Tech director Katie zazar grade one teacher from Center School Amy Hannibal green one of our speech and language Pathologists from the Middle School Kim Garcia one of our special Educators from the from Huckleberry Eileen Kramer Mrs Kramer is one of our para Educators and is the president of the Union the para educator Union Sharon was on said Sharon please feel free if I'm talking too much committees you want to say something that I ever was on look at them the personal here we asked a ton of questions we had the opportunity to speak with someone from the company um some of the other programs were very appealing but they were all fluff so we kind of picked the program all together I believe it was a
152unanimous decision for just the conversations about everyone's opinion and and why this and how are they going to do that it was extremely respectful and I think we picked the best crew for the job we also thank you Sharon we also had um Susan Griffin from the high school she's our assistant principal at the high school and then our SEPTA representative was Mrs mcniff and so it was really a good group of people and and we actually went around we had some consensus on a scope and then had some more questions and went back and had another meeting and went through the scope again so it was really a measure twice cut once um and so I'm really excited about it it's going to reveal what it reveals and where we have strengths we'll continue
153to bolster like we say about with like I said earlier in the the strategic planning presentation under system and structure and where we have needs and there's recommendations we'll move forward on those and that'll be part of our plan to make sure Mr what's his name Mr Carrera when he knocked that Pro oh I'm not allowed to say his name sorry um when he was telling us how bad the program was parents asked for this evaluation and then didn't give anyone a chance to say what the evaluation will entail so I was a little bit concerned that they brought up a major concern of this they're not happy with my special education but they're not giving us the time or the respect to work with them to work it out thank you so that's my
154update so any questions on the status of this sure yeah I do um I do have some questions I know some people from the public asked them to I thought they were really good questions I'm a little disappointed in myself that I didn't really think of the one thing was outplacements um I think that in the first paragraph of proposed Services It should read regarding special education practices in The District in the district and I don't know if that's considered in the district right but um or maybe that's just what we're going to remember when you're reviewing IEPs and they're looking at individual education evaluations and they have focus groups those that topic of outplacements will come up and again they they only have so much scope and so much capacity and bandwidth so you
155can't write every single thing under the sun down however outplacements are a part of our special education program so if it comes up through a focus group if it comes up through you know one of the things in the second iteration of the scope of work was looking at parents who've requested individual um uh evaluations and and why are they doing that that was the big question what kind of assessments are being used for that that's going to lead to some conversations Joy about exactly that question um so I'm not at all concerned that that's not going to to come up um and so the other thing like I said it's an iterative process there will be recommendations and pieces of the report that will say the board may want to take a further look
156at X or Y or Z but in this four-month scope we didn't get a full detailed study of that but we saw some areas you might want to be thinking about and then that could be the next phase of work that we do so it doesn't just end on in June and it's over there may be a few other things that we want to budget for and put under consideration and if we're fortunate enough to be able to utilize a grant like we're doing this year how whatever whatever we need to do we'll continue to do you saw in my systems and structure slide all those different partners we have we're happy to work with them and get that honest third party objective feedback it keeps us in a continuous Improvement cycle so I understand
157that you know that no I know it's not like it's the end goal is sure you know at the end of the report but I would like that to be a focus considering that's a huge portion of our special ed and I I'll be honest with you we went with the selection committee on what our understanding of the needs were going forward we went at it twice we've engaged with them now and they're starting and there's I don't know that in the current budget and the current time frame that they could add that on I could certainly ask but I don't know that they can do that so that's that's the only part of that um they've got their Manpower assigned so but I think we all agreed that we didn't want to limit this
158review either we wanted it to be really thorough um so I don't want to pigeonhole us either with a time constraint because this is really important and valuable work I think you know our placement should be a big Focus I don't want it to just to be something that's that could possibly come up I could I could ask Dana corvo who is the the um liaison and coordinator if there's a way that that could be done I just I just don't know if it's possible given their time frame at this point and I can come back to you and sure you know that's more than happy to to be frank the the question that was posed here today was a very valid one which is I think if you don't look at it you know
159is there the fundamental question is there's stuff we should be investing in in District instead of sending kids to very expensive out of District right and that would be a question I would I think you can deal with without necessarily a deep deep deep dive right it's just uh you have lots of experience with other districts you know here's the reasons kids are going out of district and we can't usually see that at our level but with uh being able to just look at it and say you know man you guys should Auto invest in XYZ you'll save lots of money there and you can go reinvest it in something else it's a bad thing to have a discussion about right and we you know we've chosen certain types of supports that we don't have
160in District right other districts may have them and it's paid off for them and that's a question I think we need to be able to ask I mean we've got what 30 some odd kids out of District 31-ish yeah and so just if that went to 25 right that's a lot of money right so I think it's a fair question how you Incorporated is I think the question is is something to have a discussion and just as Joy um alluded to earlier I you know regardless of whether students are in or out of District they're still our purview so they you know they're part of the scope right so they would be part of that scope but that's certainly and therefore I think that we probably could I think and I don't want to know
161all the topics that we have the one that gets the most attention is whether you send a child out of District or not I mean man I think about the amount of time I hear that we all spend and the parents spend before you make a decision to send a child somewhere else is extraordinary so and uh so I will pursue that um but I certainly here cannot make that promise and I'm not gonna I'm not going to make that promise uh if it's something that's difficult for them to incorporate but I agree that it's an area to look the other thing is let's be very Frank here working with the selection committee who went through the the various scopes of work and proposals we were working off of the concerns that were continually brought
162up and to be very Frank while it's a topic of conversation students who are outplaced in the cost and so forth as we budget the the concerns were not coming from that group of parents and so being very responsive to the parents who have come forward to us so um at some point you do have to make a decision and take some action and then learn from that get your report and continue learning and moving forward as you need to so that's where we're at otherwise similar to the equity and inclusion subcommittee we could get into paralysis by analysis never make a decision and four months from now still be talking about this and not have any report that gives us any good juice to go forward with strong recommendations so um but I agree
163let's take a look at it great point and how are the classrooms selected so this is a learning environment we're going to be working directly with the principals and so the classes are you know they want to get into a general-led classroom that has obviously mixture in their resource rooms self-contained rooms you know there's there's the kinds of classrooms they want to get in and then we look at the times that they're visiting the school and then we the principals and secretarial team and uh make the decisions on where the students are going oh there was a question um on who the main liaison is I I'm in name the the direct liaison but Karen Olson our special education secretary she's really working on the coordination and the sharing of documentation and the accessing and
164so forth Karen is a very seasoned special education secretary he's been in several districts but she's been with us for quite a she's back with us after a long time with us do parents have to be notified of if their child is being observed and they did a non-disclosure agreement with us and so no but we are going to be sending Communications out so parents know what's coming that kind of thing and the communication is ready to go out tomorrow to let everybody know this is the initial to get everybody out there and we'll do school level Communications let people know the only other thing um as a case manager Communications uh the online survey I don't know if the committee talked about it or it came up but I definitely want to see on
165the survey if for parents to have an opportunity to know if they have seeked outside services like denied the services from the school and have seek outside services or are currently receiving Services outside of school or has sent their child to another school I think that's really important information to have okay so people are if parents are seeking outside Services have seeked are currently seeking I saw it yeah you must be wrong or um or have sent and want to you know a child to a different school that's a survey that they have a base survey and then they customize it to our district so I took notes on that so that's something we do definitely the other thing that parents raise maybe you can answer is about non-special Ed parents being surveyed and do
166you know the reasoning behind their inclusion because one of the things we talk about and one of the data points is they want to look at our srbi intervention handbook and our processes for how students end up testing and being identified into special education so there's those are regular ed students and it could be parents who've had those experiences early on or now we're in high school and they're not identified with special needs and they don't receive services but they may have had some experience uh in there and in the demographic information it will be noted as such so we'll know if it was a general letter a special education uh parent survey completions will be able to disaggregate the data that way my question really has to do just do again with sort of
167the depth of the study and I'm I'm sort of seeing in every different category that they're going to study it just says things like a random sample or a sampling of Records a sample of students in the IEP review it's observation of selected students so how you know how many records are they looking at how many students are they going to be um so that they have complete so we've assigned what we do in these kind of services and reviews yet they have to sign a confidentiality agreement they're given access and they go in and they they look through the samples and so that's how you do any of these reviews you know you can't possibly go through 400 files it's just you know that where students may have been in have a file that's
16812 years thick it's just not a a practical realistic or actually at the end of the day helpful and so there's there's the random there's also there are very few students who are in that they talked about the um going out for independent education evaluations we're specifically going to say here are the students that went to Independent educational evaluations select from this particular group because that has to do with intervention that has to do with relationships there's a lot there that goes on there and that was a big piece for the committee they wanted to really look at that so that's so just to clarify so you're handing over all of it and they are selecting correct okay correct absolutely that's an important clarification absolutely keep asking questions and will those will those teachers or
169classroom teachers know that somebody's coming in yes absolutely that's why they're getting the initial Communications already scheduled to go out tomorrow morning so they know there will be school visits and observations and then the administrative team will be letting them know because that's tricky too because right you're they're looking for Implement implementation of the IEP so it's like right when I when I know it being observed I'm going to put my best foot forward multiple people and you know they know they're coming I mean they're going to be visiting um I've got to be candid with you um people who know you're coming and if it's an act to put their best foot forward in astute experienced Observer see you right through that my view well we're not going to sneak up on our teachers
170which is one of the one of the things that I know the committee looked at was references from other districts who've used the correct folks can you give me the highlights of what we learned yeah they really I think dug in on the Southington study because it was the most recent southington's District we're probably a third the size of Southington they have six or seven thousand kids uh quite a large District um and a Suburban District though and the the study I'm not sure when the study occurred and their scope of work but I know the presentation was I think in September October of this past year so anybody can go look at it was Dana who Dana corbo who's doing our study was the one who did the study in Southington and actually gave
171the report so if anybody's interested they could actually go View the presentation to the board of ed Southington um I checked the reference and I talked with the superintendent uh very pleased with the report got some interesting Staffing information that they didn't anticipate they would receive um all kinds of interesting information that they're using to drive their program forward and then I called the new special education newer special education director who came on during the pandemic and I think it's Suffield and talked with her she wasn't there for the program review or the presentation you know in findings but she inherited the report and her report to me was that the I wish I could think of her name but her report to me was the um the staff and faculty actually appreciated the recommendations
172that were coming forward to help Drive change in the district it was things they were longing for perhaps some of the things were you know we're hearing in-house that they're looking to see change in and she's used that kind of as part of her entry plan when she came in to help move things forward so that's what this is this ends up getting this report becomes or any of those reports I refer to in my presentation become a tool to help us drive change going forward and Improvement in best practice and that's what we're looking for we must be doing something right this young man who spoke earlier how he had the confidence and the ability to say what he had to say was spectacular so someone's doing something right it absolutely was [Music] he's
173a good young man that's for sure any other questions all right what's the next checkpoint the next checkpoint that we'll be able to hear yeah to let you know how it's going you know they've been in they visited this many days they've looked through files um they are trying um by the end of April to have all the school visits physically done the online meetings the focus groups you know all the different things they're doing the survey completed reviewing all of our data then they're really going to dig in with what they found and work through and then analyze everything and then come up with those common themes and recommendations for for driving change uh culminating like I said with a report to us in at the end of the school year and how many
174days will they be in District like between the various schools um it's 24 and a half total I don't know if that they're not in 24.5 that counts some of the days of analysis okay so maybe half of that they'll actually be you know in and around the district and like I said there's there's four primary folks that will be there at the same time yeah there'll be different schools or a half day here or having an online meeting you know whatever it might be they'll also you know the internet view focus groups could turn into interviews if there's only one or two people there so it all depends but we want to get that communication out there to parents and some of the parents who spoke tonight actually said that they would help Drive
175some of the um communication about focus groups and things like that to make sure people know with their online presence and they can help us with that so that was good yeah cool um I think the board would love to see the survey itself you know because some of us are parents we'll see it some of us are not um or grandparents maybe but I would love to for one for us to get a copy of the survey sure as before it goes out or as it's going out right I just think that's that's going to be a probably the one of the broadest touch points in our community sure so I think it's important that we see it yep so all right well hearing uh no other questions we can move on to the
176next item which is about the thank you John um about the budget um and it's it's just to get an update of where we are I'm sure you all have seen that the uh since we last met we talked about at that time we talked about the fact that the first selectman had made her recommendations on the budget now the uh The Next Step was that the board of Selectmen they've spent God bless them I think they've met every day for at least two hours doing a budget review we had our budget review spread over at what a two-month period with lots of finance committee meetings and all on all of our meetings they had theirs compressed into a like an eight day period and they spent it God bless them but they actually restored
177the we had a half a million dollar reduction at the first at the first selectman's recommendation the board of Selectmen restored a hundred thousand dollars of it um which I'll thank them for that when I see them uh the uh it was a two to one vote and so it wasn't unanimous and I do believe the the dissenting vote wanted to give more back to the schools which um is a point of discussion they have a hard equation even with all the even with all the um the cuts that they've taken in different programs and they cut a lot out of capital it's still a four and a half percent tax increase right so it's a noticeable challenge that they have and it's all driven by the debt bubble just for those of you listening
178uh the the fact that we have all the debt coming online for the new school at the same time we haven't finished paying off the debt from the renovations we did in the late 1990s and early 2000s to our schools so and then the downtown the road paving bonds there's a lot of stuff about debt so one of the things that I talked to Mr Rooney about was he's gonna he's he's had one of his members build up a whole Capital debt management module for the town and he's going to try and do a want to use one of the board of Finance meetings to actually talk through you know what's going on right which I told him was a good idea because nobody really understands that where we are right now is that the
179board of Finance is receiving that budget from the board of Selectmen this evening right um we are invited as a board a week from tomorrow Thursday the 9th um to have a session with the board of Finance I've asked them what do you want to do we've already done our presentation so what do you what is it you want to do he's going to survey his members after the um after his meeting tonight and we'll get back to me on do they want to they have questions for us you know is it going to be a give and take um but they they need to make some decisions over the next month we do have some good news against the 400 000 Challenge and let me ask Mr post to come share some of the
180very good news and we might have turned it off yeah thanks for allowing me to do this uh as you know we've been struggling with the increases in our health insurance costs this whole body season starting out back in I think December when we got our first estimate from the insurance company that it was going to be a 12 percent increase and then they revised it in January to be a range of eight to ten so we made it ten percent uh just got notification yesterday they were even a little more specific that the estimate now is that it will be a 7.1 percent increase in next year's rates which means we could if we adopt that we could reduce the budget by about 198 thousand dollars which is almost half of the remaining 400
181that we would need to find and the board of Finance is aware of this as is the first selectment in the board of selectman that's still not final yet right until April it's not final until April but this is the most precise they have ever been with us although I still don't restaurants I trust but I'll say I don't necessarily trust that it will happen exactly that way but they've never said last year did a little ping-ponging too right last year did a lot of ping-pong this one the words were different they said we're providing this to you because we know you're doing your budgets yeah right so you know it was very specifically pointed no acknowledging that all the state agencies and and towns all are doing budgets so and that that shows that
182the Connecticut partnership plan uh those working there are being responsive to the local communities and and this board along with the board of Selectmen and board of Finance you know the each chair sent a joint letter about this and making sure we have plenty of time and notice about what the budget will be and other communities have done the same thing and organizations I know my Connecticut Association of school business officials has weighed in with them and uh I attended a presentation when we found out about the the um eight to ten percent range they actually showed us data from their plan and how how they had originally come up with the 12 estimate and how the data was trending and got it down to 10 so they're much more transparent than they have ever
183been with us and much more specific so I think that was a result of of so many people communicating and then with with them and letting them know the importance of us getting the data sooner it's probably worth asking them well how did you get it from eight to ten down to 7.1 and let them explain it so yeah the the other thing that's going on is I got a call from Mr Rooney from the board of Finance today and he asked if we had locked in on heating oil costs right if you remember that was then the other big issue that we've been dealing with and those costs have been trending downward right so he is one of the deliberations he's going to do by the way we have not locked in because it's
184trending downward and you'd be kind of silly to be right now locking in for next year Town hasn't locked in either and we do that we do that again we do it together when we make those decisions so he's thinking that he would suggest we budget at a little bit more aggressive level than the 3.33 cents a gallon that we had it's under it's three dollars ish and on its way down now um already so he he there's a there's room but it's a just it's a bet right if you if you know what I mean so he's he's thinking about pegging a number that's lower than we budgeted but they carry contingency and do the same commitment to us that they've done on some other topics right that that if it's different they'll cover
185us within town-wide contingency and I told them we'd be willing to engage on that discussion right now and but it kind of it's a question of balance to me right but that could be worth another chunk of money so um so I will get some feedback from Mr Rooney after their meeting tonight about what they want to happen on the 9th um I suspect that they won't know any questions right this moment but they'll have questions by the time we get there and so I'm going to keep urging them to get us the questions as early as they can right if they have particular questions um they've been very complimentary about the thoroughness of the budget that we brought forward because it's basically an inflation story and they got that they got that message so
186it's just a hard equation right and capital is going to be I think if you want my opinion capital is going to be the point of discussion in the entire budget just because the debt bubble is so own right where this next year next this year coming year and the year after the two worst and then the high school debt rolls off in the late 2020s I got that right 2020. it's like sought versus um okay that's all I had to say anybody else have any updates on on the budget so um okay uh next is Candlewood Lake Elementary School [Music] percent complete so we're getting there uh still under budget great story um the cafeteria ceiling clouds are being installed um interior Timber beams oh perfect if I can see it there myself one
187thing you're not going to see on there but I wanted to report um so you'll see in here some of the terrazzo flooring um the main stairwell still hasn't gone in right because I had one of these days I will get to one of the walkthroughs um but they may need some stronger steel to be put in for those Terrazzo Treads so that's just one little thing that they're working through and then the main steering wheel will go in um so from what I can say um the exterior so you can see a lot of the exterior brick work has been completed the main doors are into that's always nice instead of those big plywood doors yeah actual real doors yeah doors are going in everywhere so this is the back over by the playscape
188area main stairwell you could tell is not in yet um I don't think we can't see any flooring really but the flooring prep is going in there we go um yep so this is the uh gross mortar gross motor motor area and the cafeteria so you can see some of those um the ceiling um design work is going in we have a lot of the wood paneling already in this is the administrative first floor so obviously some of the the wall designs going in the floor on the first level still obviously is going to be the last thing to go in so bear that in mind the gym still kind of looks the same but not much is really being done in this space other than the flooring which is going to be pretty much
189the one of the last things to go in and then yeah we have um this area here you can see some of the the wall designs taking shape there and there and our entry into the neighborhoods so those are I'm not sure where which exact Corner this is but it might be down by the Pre-K Wing which yeah they're still doing some of the sheetrocking and taping there but that was one of the last uh neighborhoods to come on board the classrooms look great you can tell the flooring is already in there's the protective plastic on it because those rooms are for the most part pretty much they're done I mean the sports going in yeah technology doors are hung so um this happens to be fifth grade yeah another shot of a classroom and
190some of the breakout room classroom to breakout room area that's that actually I think about that Rosa for a second they could the project manager uh Chris Mitchell called that a breakout room that's one of the classrooms at the end I'm not sure one of the bigger classrooms large sliding door so it could be not only a regular classroom it could empty the end of the hallway where that could be another part of a classroom that's great and so I mean some of these some of the design work that's going in some of the lighting fixtures it just looks starting to look really finished it's really nice yeah really beautiful and then the uh the bridge connection area right connecting all the neighborhood wings some of the wall designs this is the band room it's
191a bathroom [Music] and look at this Terrazzo flooring I mean it looks it looks really great I was really excited to see that and it goes does this go along with the neighborhood that it's near yes this this happens to be rainforest three yeah this is grade three great and so they're stencil designs there's a lot of Labor that goes into initial material grinding and leveling the concrete floor that's there for structure then stencils that have to go down other materials then the terrazzo that gets out I mean it's just that's why it takes so long to have to schedule it and then it needs time to cure once it's laid out we went through and kind of bothered the workers and got in the way and then we realized we're cutting into their time
192these are the stencils you're talking about right yeah so built into the trouser flooring is all kinds of artwork and uh here you saw a leaf before here's a frog so you see different kinds of uh habitat and animals and so forth throughout it's really centered on Elementary children Japanese more of the terrazzo flooring the different layers going in I think that was the last one yeah so it looks good I had something yeah go ahead thanks so I just were really excited we've confirmed that on March 16th it's one of the early dismissal days that um for conference is that Center School and Huckleberry Paras are going to go visit and take a tour and because we have to work with everybody's work schedule and then we're hoping March 7th which is next week
193if I can confirm with the project manager that the whiskey near peras that are the assigned right now that will likely be our fifth grade paraprofessionals will be going uh on a tour as well so we're trying to arrange that in the after school after school time on the early dismissal day so we're really excited about that and I had a large update for you two weeks ago so I'll hold often anymore that was it all right so that's it for our main agenda uh since we are up to public comment and so one person who had signed up for a couple of comment is no longer here so uh so we will oh your mic wasn't all right I'm sorry so we're on we're on to public comment the one person who did sign
194up for the second round of public comment is no longer here see them at all so I think we can go move on three main points your presentation so I was thinking the Sandy Hook promise say something presentation should be one the Strategic plan presentation should be the second and I think the special ed program review update is yeah worth putting in instead of the Candlewood Lake update so I think Candlewood Lake update hasn't changed a whole lot since last time so I would put those other three things in yeah okay uh so next blast up is upcoming events okay at Center School the one school one read for the month of March is kicking off on Friday March 3rd with a whole school pajama day and the first of four themed related books are
195going home to families and Center School has parent-teacher conferences March 16th and 17th with an early release for students that's the same at Huckleberry for March 16th and 17th Huckleberry also has the Spring Book Fair beginning on March 9th and this week they're celebrating right across America week with dress is your favorite character day tomorrow and a pajama and bring a book day on Friday at whiskaneer on Sunday March 5th is a family fun bowling night um six to eight pm at Strikers to help fund the 8th grade moving up ceremony and dinner dance and they also have parent teacher conferences March 7th next Tuesday with an early release and the high school has parent-teacher conferences March 9th with an early release and the musical Little Shop of Horrors kicking off the 16th through the
19619th that's all I have cool all right that's it for tonight so without objection we are adjourned thank you all it was a very full meeting tonight [Music]